Payments expert Azupay is turning its attention to the insurance industry after success helping Australia’s banks, telcos and government.

Updates to legacy technology have given insurance groups an opportunity to reassess how they collect and disburse funds and reap the benefits of real-time account-to-account payment solutions.

And Chief Product Officer Tom Rundle says the sector now presents “so much potential for payment pain points to be solved by Azupay. Insurance companies and brokers should absolutely be moving onto these new payment rails. There are huge operational benefits from doing that.

“As our technology landscape evolves, older payment rails are barely fit for purpose today. Insurance companies that move now can have greater settlement predictability and operational control. They can improve their verification and error handling.”

Founded in Sydney in 2019, Azupay began with a PayID receivables product for the NSW Department of Customer Services, to replace decades-old BPAY technology. It now counts NAB, Optus and Luxury Escapes among its many customers.

More recently it helped groups such as NAB implement PayID Receivables and major property management groups roll out PayTo – an innovative real-time payment solution that offers enhanced customer experiences and provides a “new generation” digital replacement for direct debit.

The team at Azupay quickly recognised businesses would benefit from a solution to manage the change.

“There’s a fair bit of complexity to get it working as a really seamless experience,” Mr Rundle says.

“That’s where we come in and make it easy for the business to operate in a way that really works well for their end customers.

“There is a lot of complexity under the hood – people are surprised by how much goes on. We’re dedicated as a business to getting this to work.”

Mr Rundle says it can be difficult to orchestrate a real-time payment for a specific purpose, manage all the different paths a user might take, and make sure the payment goes through straight away every time.

“That’s where we really excel in a way that no one else is succeeding – we are ahead of the curve.”

Making PayTo and PayID Receivables easy

Insurers that adopt Azupay’s instant settlement solution enjoy automated verification, reconciliation and settlement, and reduced chargebacks and disputes as payments are verified.

There is reduced operational strain and lower failure rates, and less opportunity for fraud.

“Really, the pitch is a better customer experience for their end customers, and largely through a real improvement in their own operational efficiency internally,” Mr Rundle says.

“We provide the solution for the businesses that makes it easy for them to offer PayTo for the kind of payments insurers use a lot, and the many individual ad hoc payments that insurers might receive.

“Just getting 1% improvement on every single one of those payments adds up to a very big impact.”

PayTo and PayID Receivables comes with real-time bank authentication, allowing all manner of uses older payment methods could never match.

Call centre payments are one area benefiting, with staff able to share a unique PayID such as “casenumber@insurer.com” for easy payment via a customer’s banking app during a support call.

This replaces processes such as diverting a caller to a computer service to dictate their card number over the phone.

“It’s a horrible experience – often the customer drops out of the whole call at that point,” Mr Rundle says.

“That’s an example of the kind of problems we solve for insurers. The call centre operator straight away says, ‘Great, I can see the money, it’s updated in my system. Your case is now moving forward.’

“In the airline industry, that is live for many, many flights, exactly that kind of use case.”

Mr Rundle says he “just loves” solving payment problems, and that efficient and safe movement of payments is “absolutely the lifeblood in the economy”.

PayTo reflects lenders recognising that, as an industry, they needed to move to real-time account payments. This in turn is a significant development – and opportunity – for insurers and other sectors.

“That’s quite a shift, and that’s very much the space we’re in. We can help businesses do that,” Mr Rundle says. “The big banks are saying, ‘Off you go, here’s the APIs, go and make this thing work.’

“We say, ‘It’s really complicated, so we’ll make it work for you.’ That has been what we focused on ever since PayID and PayTo launched. That’s our point of difference.”

For more information, download the Azupay white paper or contact the team at Azupay.